Democracy before Demagogues
This is not a “I told you so” letter — no one, especially me, can claim to have such clarity and foresight. However, given Trump’s personality and his ego, which were on full display well before his election, during his election, and during his tenure, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that Trump was always about Trump, not the United States, and that he was going to attempt to subvert democracy itself to stay in power. One clear example of this cult of personality was put on display during the attempted insurrection on January 6th when Trump supporters had the audacity to remove American flags and replace them with Trump flags. This kind of mentality, where citizens have been duped into believing the people in power are more important and above our system of governance, is what leads to the death of democracy.
This was put plainly in a book I recently finished called Mortal Republic by Edward Watts, which given the recent events should be required reading by all Americans who give a damn about our democracy. In it, the fall of the Roman Republic and its eventual submission to autocracy is detailed. There is a cast of powerful men and their enablers who, over the course of just a few hundred years, subverted the Republic’s proven checks and balances that had maintained stability up to that era. It was not through one swing of the sword, but by a thousand tiny cuts that took down the Republic and ultimately led to Augustus becoming emperor and sealing the fate of the doomed democracy. While Trump may fail today, he has set a dangerous example for a more conniving individual who will no doubt show their face in the near future. Will our institutions punish President Trump and his enablers and set an example? Will powerful laws be put in place, replacing the traditions we’ve relied upon for so long, but were so easily and readily smacked down by President Trump? Or will we allow this to go unpunished, guaranteeing another onslaught?
This letter is a demand that you denounce right now the actions taken by Trump and his mob. There is no room to “both sides” this. Already, the whataboutisms have started, comparing Black Lives Matter to these insurrectionists. Enough. Nothing like this has happened in 200 years where a mob attempted to overthrow our government in the name of one man. The fact they made as much progress in their small feat is disgraceful and deserves full accountability from both rioters and government agencies, which we’ll no doubt see in the coming weeks.
On that same topic, it cannot be ignored the blatant double standard on display by police and the military during this insurrection. White privilege has never been so obvious. The proof is directly available to all of us unless you only watch right wing media. Pictures from the Black Lives Matter protests show an incredible overuse of force — legions of police and National Guard posted to contain the largely peaceful protests, giving off the false image that they were in fact largely violent and required such force. They were also deployed in large numbers to protect federal assets, such as state buildings.
In contrast, what force did we see for this planned Trump rally? Next to nothing. A skeleton crew of Capitol Police. No D.C. police at the start. No National Guard even in reserve. Police opening gates into the Capitol. Police taking selfies with the insurrectionists. No rubber bullets. Moderate use of tear gas. Police asking the insurrectionists to kindly leave the Capitol rather than being arrested on the spot for their multiple crimes. The police force cannot claim ignorance of this event. The President announced the rally days ahead of time. QAnon message board activity has increased ten-fold and coalesced around January 6th. Social media groups rallied their supporters.
Outside the rioting itself, individuals of power were egging it on. Senator Crawley’s infamous picture of fist pumping at the rioters will hopefully sink his career sooner rather than later. President Trump posted a video, which later got him suspended from Twitter and Facebook, in which he said, “we love you” to the mob, many of whom were wearing and bearing such logos as 6MWE (6 Million (Jews) Wasn’t Enough), “Camp Auschwitz”, and Confederate flags.
Is this what they wish to replace our Republic with? Autocracy. Anti-Semitism. Racism. Barbarism. QAnon conspiracies, which by the way, had marked January 6th as “The Storm”, a day in which President Trump would arrest and execute his political enemies. Can we even imagine if the Chamber hadn’t evacuated and these thugs had come face to face with, say, Nancy Pelosi? Would they have committed extrajudicial killings in our sacred house of democracy? We can only assume yes. They would only be carrying out orders from the President and his enablers, after all.
This has exposed and put on full display how dysfunctional some government agencies have become. Capitol Police, for example, needs purged. They are clearly compromised. We spend $750 billion a year on “Defense”, yet this hodgepodge of rioters and self-proclaimed freedom fighters breached and ransacked our Capitol in 2 hours. OUR CAPITOL. If our Capitol cannot be secured against such a feeble force, what can we depend on? If we cannot use our security forces in a fair, unbiased way, how do we trust them to be non-partisan? What are our foreign enemies thinking? They must be delighted to have the free intelligence.
The biggest question I’m left with is this: How can we move these “Patriots” from simply shouting “LAW AND ORDER!” to actually understanding what that means? The saying goes that democracy is grounded in power to the people, not the people in power. Clearly, they do not realize their own cognitive dissonance, even as they committed ultimate irony by carrying Confederate flags and simultaneously yelling “F*CK YOU” and “TRAITORS!” at the police. Support the Thin Blue Line? Forget it. They’ve lost credibility — on camera, this time. We’ve learned that conspiracy groups thrive on cognitive dissonance, though. They are, as I write this, simultaneously taking credit for the insurrection while claiming that ANTIFA agitators were actually responsible. It doesn’t matter. Confusion is the point, and it’s incredibly sad millions of Americans are so easily duped into this defiled thinking. Everyday Americans — those you see at the grocery store, at the Teller line, driving a semi, fixing your roads. So many among us have fallen for this ruse.
Furthermore, these cultists are part and parcel of one Venn diagram. They reject government (to replace it with…what?). They reject science. They reject expertise. They are anti-Semitic. They are racist. They are sexist. They are by and large uneducated, poor, and lack even the most basic critical thinking skills. They are incapable of accepting reality on issues that directly impact their cult leader, Donald J. Trump. It is exactly why a Trump rally will also feature speeches from anti-vaxxers and flat earthers. Mitt Romney’s speech last night struck me when he said with force “Tell them the truth!”. I want that to happen, but would it matter? Truly, it’s a most basic principle we should follow from here on out, but again I ask if it would matter at all.
When I look at the factions America has slowly divided itself into, I cannot understand why any rational person would align themselves with this mob. They are incongruent with a functioning democracy. But that alone would not be a logical reason for me to dismiss their positions. Instead, using reason, historical context, and the examples we’ve seen over the last 4 years especially (but more like since the Reagan years), it is obvious that the rest of us have a clear duty to expel those in power who back this movement. We have a clear duty to rescue and educate these lost Americans. We have a clear duty to show them the consequences of their actions should they ever succeed in their insurrection and idol worshipping. We must unite first against them, and then for them. We must protect our Republic at all costs, for it is not immortal.
